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Canonical's UK-based operations earned $65.7 million in revenue during fiscal 2013, a significant boost over the previous year's revenue of $56.8 million. However, the company is in investment mode as it attempts to expand beyond desktops and servers to the mobile market. While Canonical lost $11.1 million in fiscal 2012, its losses rose to $21.3 million in fiscal 2013.

The numbers come from an annual report (PDF) made public this month, as required by UK law. The report provides our best look at the finances of Canonical, which is a private company and doesn't file the quarterly reports we see from public companies. This report has limitations, though, covering the 12 months through March 31, 2013, the date Canonical's fiscal year ended. It also doesn't cover Canonical's entire worldwide operations.

Further Reading

"As an international company, Canonical files public financial records in each jurisdiction where it operates," a Canonical spokesperson told Ars a few months back after we inquired about the previous year's report. The UK report "is not a representation of the situation of Canonical across our global operations," the company said.

The annual report (provided to Ars by financial research firm DueDil) seems to cover most of Canonical's business, though. The report says that $50.6 million of the reported $65.7 million in revenue came from sales outside the UK, including $48.2 million from outside Europe. The numbers include the operations of subsidiaries in the US, Canada, and China. China alone covers "the majority of global units shipped."(Canonical reported its numbers in US dollars because it is the "functional currency of the company.")

Canonical's website says the company has "more than 500 employees in over 39 countries." The annual report covers the financial impact of 348 employees in the UK base of operations and subsidiaries. $47.7 million of Canonical's expenses were for paying salaries and benefits in fiscal 2013, up from $39.9 million the previous year.

In our feature last August, Why Ubuntu’s creator still invests his fortune in an unprofitable company, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth told Ars that his company could become profitable by stripping down to its most successful components, like its server and cloud business. "We could slice Canonical to something profitable pretty straightforwardly," Shuttleworth said at the time.

He has a grander vision, however, of turning Ubuntu into an all-encompassing platform on phones, tablets, PCs, servers, and the infrastructure underlying cloud services. As Shuttleworth said, "In my mind the scope of the opportunity has grown, and with it my willingness to invest. I'm interested in the type of disruption, in the idea that at some future date you could have an app running on your phone, that app could be an Ubuntu app, you could dock that app to a big screen, and it would then be an Ubuntu PC. The data for that could be processed in a cloud running an Ubuntu guest and that cloud could be running on an Ubuntu host."

Shuttleworth's investment may have expanded even further since the end of fiscal 2013 in March. Canonical just recently released the first stable version of Ubuntu for phones, and it plans to bring Ubuntu to tablets within a few months. If you're looking to install Ubuntu on mobile devices before officially branded hardware launches from Canonical partners, it looks like the Nexus 4 phone and second-generation Nexus 7 tablet will be the primary supported reference platforms.

Ubuntu’s path to sustainability

While the Ubuntu operating system is free and open source, Canonical's quest to become profitable has been a source of discussion for Ubuntu users for years. Canonical turning a profit would signify that the platform itself could be sustainable even without a rich benefactor.

We asked a Canonical spokesperson today if the company can provide any further financial details from countries not covered in its annual report and for the period after March 31, but we haven't heard back yet.

Canonical struck a positive tone in its annual report, describing why it's continuing to spend more than it makes in revenue. The company unveiled the phone platform in January 2013, after what the annual report describes as a significant investment in research and development. In addition to mobile, the company expects its enterprise IT and cloud businesses to power future growth.

Here are some highlights from the report:

Continuing Canonical's existing relationships with a number of leading OEMs, Ubuntu has grown, both in number of units shipped and total revenue from professional engineering engagements. China was the stand out geographic region, accounting for the majority of global units shipped.

Canonical continued to invest in building a world class global support operation to meet its corporate customers' needs. Canonical's Ubuntu Advantage program, which provides customers with first-rate support and systems management tools, plus the added benefit of legal assurances, continued its steady year-on-year growth.

Canonical said it expanded its online services portfolio with more third-party applications in the Ubuntu Software Centre and a new developer program to accelerate software publishing. "Ubuntu One, Canonical's subscription-based personal cloud service, continued to release a number of new features," the company also said. "Canonical continues to invest in this area and expects significant revenue increases in FY2013 and beyond."

Noting that Ubuntu is found "on desktops, servers, and in-vehicle entertainment system," Canonical said it is expecting "material future growth... both in terms of number of users and customer engagements." One of Canonical's most significant deals involves building a new version of Ubuntu for the Chinese government.

Canonical's services for IT shops are another important revenue stream. "Canonical's zero license fee model has made Ubuntu the operating system of choice for cloud deployments," Canonical said. "This, in turn, is expected to drive commercial consulting and support engagements as the market matures."

UPDATE: A day after this story was published, Canonical sent us the following statement: "Canonical operates in multiple geographies across both client (desktop, phone, tablet) and cloud, and the UK business is just a small part of a global organization so does not reflect a true picture of Canonical group. As a private company, we do not discuss financials and percentages of business operations.

"Over the last year, Canonical has been growing at technology and customer levels. In the UK, we have continued to increase investment into UX design, R&D, commercial and European sales hub teams. We're excited by 2014 with the 14.04 LTS planned for April as well as announcements on both the phone and cloud sides of the business."

Promoted Comments

I sure hope that Ubuntu can start making some money. Ubuntu has done tremendous things for getting people involved in Linux and simplifying the Linux setup and bootstrapping process. In the early 2000's, that was the biggest turn off (for me at least) of most Linux distros Ubuntu.. get out your command line and get ready to waste a day, and potentially more if you screw up somewhere.

There definitely comes a point where even the richest benefactor can't keep pouring money from his own coffers into a project.. Elon Musk sunk almost all of his personal fortune into Space-X and Tesla and both almost went under. Hopefully Canonical can turn it around.

58 Reader Comments

For years now, I've used both the Desktop and Server versions of Ubuntu. I've found the Server version to be pleasant with which to work, but do not recommend the Desktop version for anyone but Developers or IT Professionals. Simply put, the Desktop version is not end-user friendly enough at this point time. I suspect that the Phone and Tablet versions of Ubuntu might be more user-friendly than the Desktop and have high hopes for their future.

It would be nice to use my phone both as a communications device and as a workstation.

For years now, I've used both the Desktop and Server versions of Ubuntu. I've found the Server version to be pleasant with which to work, but do not recommend the Desktop version for anyone but Developers or IT Professionals. Simply put, the Desktop version is not end-user friendly enough at this point time. I suspect that the Phone and Tablet versions of Ubuntu might be more user-friendly than the Desktop and have high hopes for their future.

It would be nice to use my phone both as a communications device and as a workstation.

I think the point you're making there is true of all Desktop Linux distributions. In my opinion Ubuntu is by far the easiest to use, but that's like picking the fastest horse at the glue factory. Some of my techie friends have issues trying to keep a Ubuntu install going. While I personally like Ubuntu a lot if I ever have issues it seems like I need to read a complex walk-through that involves a lot of command line work to fix it.

I don't want to sound stupid asking this, but how does Ubuntu make money when the OS is free?

Services and support for businesses using Ubuntu desktops and servers, licensing deals with cloud providers that offer Ubuntu instances, in the future licensing deals with mobile handset and tablet providers who use Ubuntu. Additionally, some of their software isn't free, specifically an IT management platform called Landscape. We described the revenue streams here: http://arstechnica.com/information-tech ... e-company/

[ ... ] I've found the Server version to be pleasant with which to work, but do not recommend the Desktop version for anyone but Developers or IT Professionals. Simply put, the Desktop version is not end-user friendly enough at this point time. [ ... ]

I've used Ubuntu for a long time but in the past couple of years dropped it completely from my personal systems. The desktop used to be quite similar to Windows in terms of the interface, and was quite user friendly for me. I never had to change anything on the command line. Updates were easy to install.

However it all started going down hill around the time they introduced PulseAudio. Software that was working would no longer run correctly, they added features I didn't want, removed features and settings I did want, then with the major interface change I just did not like it anywhere near enough to continue using it. I've switched to another distro for now. It's quite sad to me that, in my opinion anyway, they ruined a good solid desktop distro, even if it was a bit basic at times compared to some others.

I sure hope that Ubuntu can start making some money. Ubuntu has done tremendous things for getting people involved in Linux and simplifying the Linux setup and bootstrapping process. In the early 2000's, that was the biggest turn off (for me at least) of most Linux distros before Ubuntu.. get out your command line and get ready to waste a day, and potentially more if you screw up somewhere.

There definitely comes a point where even the richest benefactor can't keep pouring money from his own coffers into a project.. Elon Musk sunk almost all of his personal fortune into Space-X and Tesla and both almost went under. Hopefully Canonical can turn it around.

It's quite sad to me that, in my opinion anyway, they ruined a good solid desktop OS, even if it was a bit basic at times compared to some others.

Personally I liked them better when they were basically much a "More Updated, Friendlier" version of Debian, shipping with Gnome and just a few tweaks to increase utility and user friendliness OOTB. Their big selling point was how easy they made it to install a full Linux OS with all the creature comforts taken care of. The more of their own character they try to introduce into the product, the less I actually like the result. Maybe it's because they've got their fingers in too many pies and can't devote as much attention to any single issue, or maybe they've just been focusing on parts of the ecosystem that I don't find very interesting, but for whatever reason their products don't hook me anymore.

[ ... ] I've found the Server version to be pleasant with which to work, but do not recommend the Desktop version for anyone but Developers or IT Professionals. Simply put, the Desktop version is not end-user friendly enough at this point time. [ ... ]

I've used Ubuntu for a long time but in the past couple of years dropped it completely from my personal systems. The desktop used to be quite similar to Windows in terms of the interface, and was quite user friendly for me. I never had to change anything on the command line. Updates were easy to install.

However it all started going down hill around the time they introduced PulseAudio. Software that was working would no longer run correctly, they added features I didn't want, removed features and settings I did want, then with the major interface change I just did not like it anywhere near enough to continue using it. I've switched to another distro for now. It's quite sad to me that, in my opinion anyway, they ruined a good solid desktop OS, even if it was a bit basic at times compared to some others.

Same here. I've actually been extremely happy with OpenSuse 13.1. I'm generally not a fan of "ideology before functionality" distros like OpenSuse or Fedora when compared to Ubuntu/Mint, but OpenSuse's one click install, open build system, and fairly straightforward access to repositories with proprietary software for people who want it is surprisingly easy to navigate. I played around with Korora as well (Fedora + proprietary software) and it was pretty nice as well. The problem that Ubuntu used to solve isn't as much of a problem anymore. And the new direction of Ubuntu is making a whole bunch of new problems that other distros don't have.

It's odd, but every time I hear a quote from Shuttleworth, I get this picture of a younger Larry Ellison in my head. Can't really figure out why. Maybe their ego's feel similar in a "soundbite" environment.

You have to admire Shuttleworth's perseverance. He isn't grabbing straws but there isn't exactly a solid business at the same time. This really makes me rethink what it means to invest, in terms of both finances and time.

I've been using Linux for long enough to see some interesting trends in the desktop Linux thingy.

1. Upstream very often is the devil. KDE and gnome have a tendency to release very shitty software that doesn't work correctly or doesn't work at all. Of course the blame always falls on the distro. They didn't package the drivers correctly. Their xorg version is too patched, or not the correct version. Pulseaudio doesn't work because downstream doesn't know how to compile the source code. Bla bla bla...

2. Distros that try to find their way, e.g., ubuntu, get the most flack. Omg, they ruined the gnome libs. I so much loved how the old gnome 2 looked like windows 95. I just can't stand this abomination called unity, etc.

3. In the real world the distro hoppers are few and far between. The majority uses ubuntu with unity because this combination gives the best experience one can have on Linux. It just works. :-) The remainder of users have some version of fedora or suse. End of story.

In reality, Canonical is doing the right choice. For the base system they're using some of their own software and the excellent Qt5 libraries. I hope that in the future this will mean that ubuntu will not be just a distro that repackages and recompiles the source from upstream, but it has its own independence. This has proven to be the right direction with unity7 and it should be the right direction with the transition to unity8. The stong dependence from upstream for the base system, i.e., the one that is connected with the UI, must stop, or else ubuntu will turn into yet another gnome or kde distro. Nobody likes that.

I sure hope that Ubuntu can start making some money. Ubuntu has done tremendous things for getting people involved in Linux and simplifying the Linux setup and bootstrapping process. In the early 2000's, that was the biggest turn off (for me at least) of most Linux distros before Ubuntu.. get out your command line and get ready to waste a day, and potentially more if you screw up somewhere.

There definitely comes a point where even the richest benefactor can't keep pouring money from his own coffers into a project.. Elon Musk sunk almost all of his personal fortune into Space-X and Tesla and both almost went under. Hopefully Canonical can turn it around.

Other players were making great strides in improving Linux on the desktop before Canonical came along. Ubuntu gets a lot of credit for other people's work. This even includes base Debian tools that are slick enough for the likes of Apple to try and clone them. It's a little overrated really. Sure Canonical grabbed the torch and ran with it for awhile but blithering ninnies blow things way out of proportion.

There are areas where Ubuntu falls down and others have moved to fill in the gaps.

They also currently seem intent on undoing everything they ever achieved.

It's odd, but every time I hear a quote from Shuttleworth, I get this picture of a younger Larry Ellison in my head. Can't really figure out why. Maybe their ego's feel similar in a "soundbite" environment.

I've been using Ubuntu on my desktop for about 2-3 years and I have no problems with any of the latest distributions.

It's sad for me to see people complaining on how they just can't fix stuff it doesn't work. I don't think any popular contemporary GNU/Linux distro is so hard for one to get used to. I see a lot of old and non-technical people who don't even know english that do it.

I think it's time to just admit that change is hard. This is the main problem. You get stuck with a mindset and is (mentally) too comfortable to keep going with it, although along the way you get a lot of crap.

Other thing that a lot of people don't realise is that any GNU/Linux distro that gains popularity helps all the others. I don't see the point of all the fanboy-ism and hate. You like Fedora or Suse, go with it but don't trash Ubuntu just because you don't like a specific UI or don't understand what is their long time goal. Grow up and remember you are free to choose and to develop for any platform you want.

I was an avid fan of Ubuntu 9.04, which was used in the teaching of my first Linux course. In the middle of the course sequence, 9.10 was released, and the advice of the professor was that 9.04 was rock-solid; and to not assume the same for any follow-ons.That was the best advice I ever got: 9.10, 10.04, and 10.10 were buggy, and Canonical would NEVER answer any bug reports, much less fix the bugs. Not only that, There was a big uprising in the community about where Shuttleworth decided desktop buttons should be changed to, with Shutlleworth telling all his users to go to Hell; that Ubuntu was not a democracy, and that he'd damned well put the desktop buttons anywhere he pleased.That's when I switched to Linux MINT. The differences in attitude towards the users by the two different developers (Clement Lefebvre, in the case of Mint)) are, as a book says "...as far as the east is from the west...".Then, of course, Unity was introduced with the puffery that "...it was so simple that even your mum could use it...". And with each new distro introduction, Shutlleworth said that he'd never said it would be READY when it was introduced!

[By the way, why are you using a "file photo" from 2006, showing Shuttleworth in a KUBUNTU shirt. You, and all your readers are certainly aware that there is no such thing as a Canonical KUBUNTU. There has NOT been since Shuttleworth scrapped Canonical's Kubuntu three years ago when he fired the one man responsible for the design, integration, and support of KDE into Ubuntu. Of course, Mark Shuttleworth would NEVER publicly state that there is no Canonical Kubuntu. Kubuntu development was picked up by a company named 'Blue Systems', and is reputed to be one of the best Linux distros available. Remember this if you're looking for a dynamite Linux distro: "Blue Kubuntu".]

I don't dislike Mark Shuttleworth. To the contrary, my feelings parallel those paraphrased by Mark Twain regarding a certain individual:

"I really think I could learn to like him if we were together on a raft at sea with no other provisions in sight."

I love Ubuntu and run it on everything - servers, desktops, laptops, tablets.

If you don't care for Unity, try it with Gnome (sudo apt-get install gnome). Gnome 3 was ugly and clunky at first, but it's grown into something beautiful. A lot of their design decisions drive me batty (appmenu, overlay scrollbar, lenses, and the like), but it's *very* easy to change it to behave how you want.

I wish I could move/reorder the window minimize/maximize/close buttons on OSX. Sadly, no.

I've been using Linux for long enough to see some interesting trends in the desktop Linux thingy.

1. Upstream very often is the devil. KDE and gnome have a tendency to release very shitty software that doesn't work correctly or doesn't work at all. Of course the blame always falls on the distro. They didn't package the drivers correctly. Their xorg version is too patched, or not the correct version. Pulseaudio doesn't work because downstream doesn't know how to compile the source code. Bla bla bla...

2. Distros that try to find their way, e.g., ubuntu, get the most slack. Omg, they ruined the gnome libs. I so much loved how the old gnome 2 looked like windows 95. I just can't stand this abomination called unity, etc.

3. In the real world the distro hoppers are few and far between. The majority uses ubuntu with unity because this combination gives the best experience one can have on Linux. It just works. :-) The remainder of users have some version of fedora or suse. End of story.

In reality, Canonical is doing the right choice. For the base system they're using some of their own software and the excellent Qt5 libraries. I hope that in the future this will mean that ubuntu will not be just a distro that repackages and recompiles the source from upstream, but it has its own independence. This has proven to be the right direction with unity7 and it should be the right direction with the transition to unity8. The stong dependence from upstream for the base system, i.e., the one that is connected with the UI, must stop, or else ubuntu will turn into yet another gnome or kde distro. Nobody likes that.

1. Upstream can be fine, and tends to be better when it's left alone. Distro-specific modifications to upstream frequently suck and introduce a litany of issues. Including new software before it's ready for prime time is also an issue desktop Ubuntu's run into repeatedly - PulseAudio's just one of the most prominent offenders.

2. I think your definition of "slack" is wrong. Maybe you meant "flack"? And a lot of the vitriol's frankly earned. Gnome jettisoned a lot of good work with Gnome 3 in pursuit of an exceedingly fuzzy notion of a unified desktop environment across platforms, and they've spent years clawing their way back to functionality. KDE 4 had a terribly rough start too, though I'd say it's in better shape now than Gnome. Unity doesn't feel like a solution to anything but Canonical's desire for a branded experience. Ubuntu pursues its own interests and comes to more and more frequent blows with the community that supports it. There's plenty of flack to go around because people care, and because software that people rely on suffers when it's mismanaged.

3. Look, a gross generalization and a subjective judgment. I've distro-hopped from Slackware to Xubuntu (where I stayed for nearly two years) before jumping to Linux Mint + XFCE. There are still Slackware users, Debian users, Puppy and Crunchbang Linux users, people who use KDE, OpenBox - why try to shove everyone into a narrow assumption? To make your own argument easier to defend?

And then you're arguing that Ubuntu should become a vertically integrated software solution that's not dependent on the open source community at large because it suits Canonical. News flash: if you stop relying on the open source community and wall Ubuntu off from everything else, it would fundamentally not be Linux any more. Expand your weltanschauung - you're missing an awful lot.

Ubuntu is easy to install and use, but like all the major desktop distros it obscures a lot of internals in the interest of ease-of-use. E.g., you plug in a USB stick, and it's mounted read-write automatically for you. That kind of do-what-I-probably-want interface has brought a lot of people to Linux, so I'm glad Shuttleworth is still footing the bill. Even though I've got no interest in using Ubuntu personally, it brings more open source users and contributors to the community. And as an Arch user, I applaud that because it means I can get more and better packages too.

I liked Ubuntu more when they were picking projects to piece together on their distro then when they decided to reinvent wheels themselves. They got into a mode where each distro was "flavor of the week" in regards to what they chose as their IM software and such, and it was just annoying finding out some app you got used to go the axe (so you had to go install it yourself). The change from Gnome / KDE to Unity was a bit of a learning curve, too. I still dislike Unity.

Jakob Nielsen (the vociferous usability guy on the web) says "do what Amazon is doing" in regards to making web sites. This means small guys need to emulate what the big guy is doing, b/c people have already learned (formed a mental model) on how to use that software. Expecting them to learn a new mental model for your small-guy stuff is asking too much.

Well, that's what Ubuntu did when they pushed Unity into everyone. Moved away from "doing what Microsoft was doing", and expected everyone to learn a new mental model. Each new version seemed to be like that; something new to learn, sometimes seemingly just for the sake of change rather than actually solving any kind of tangible problem.

I wish them the best, but it's not the Linux distro of choice for me anymore.

I love Ubuntu and run it on everything - servers, desktops, laptops, tablets.

If you don't care for Unity, try it with Gnome (sudo apt-get install gnome). Gnome 3 was ugly and clunky at first, but it's grown into something beautiful. A lot of their design decisions drive me batty (appmenu, overlay scrollbar, lenses, and the like), but it's *very* easy to change it to behave how you want.

I may be way off base here, but I think that generally if you don't like Unity, you also won't like Gnome 3 and Windows 8 for the same reasons. I just booted the latest Ubuntu liveCD (new and improved, now requires a DVD ), and it still makes it difficult to do anything that needs more than 1 screen. Fedora 20 (with Gnome 3) was not much better.

Quote:

I wish I could move/reorder the window minimize/maximize/close buttons on OSX. Sadly, no.

I was an avid fan of Ubuntu 9.04, which was used in the teaching of my first Linux course. In the middle of the course sequence, 9.10 was released, and the advice of the professor was that 9.04 was rock-solid; and to not assume the same for any follow-ons.That was the best advice I ever got: 9.10, 10.04, and 10.10 were buggy, and Canonical would NEVER answer any bug reports, much less fix the bugs. Not only that, There was a big uprising in the community about where Shuttleworth decided desktop buttons should be changed to, with Shutlleworth telling all his users to go to Hell; that Ubuntu was not a democracy, and that he'd damned well put the desktop buttons anywhere he pleased.That's when I switched to Linux MINT. The differences in attitude towards the users by the two different developers (Clement Lefebvre, in the case of Mint)) are, as a book says "...as far as the east is from the west...".Then, of course, Unity was introduced with the puffery that "...it was so simple that even your mum could use it...". And with each new distro introduction, Shutlleworth said that he'd never said it would be READY when it was introduced!

[By the way, why are you using a "file photo" from 2006, showing Shuttleworth in a KUBUNTU shirt. You, and akk your readers are certainly aware that there is no such thing as a Canonical KUBUNTU. There has NOT been since Shuttleworth scrapped Canonical's Kubuntu three years ago when he fired the one man responsible for the design, integration, and support of KDE into Ubuntu. Of course, Mark Shuttleworth would NEVER publicly state that there is no Canonical Kubuntu. Kubuntu development was picked up by a company named 'Blue Systems', and is reputed to be one of the best Linux distros available. Remember this if you're looking for a dynamite Linux distro: "Blue Kubuntu".]

I don't dislike Mark Shuttleworth. To the contrary, my feelings parallel those paraphrased by Mark Twain regarding a certain individual:

"I really think I could learn to like him if we were together on a raft at sea with no other provisions in sight."

Has it occurred to you that you might be a bit self-centered? 10.04 and 10.10 are widely viewed as the most stable Ubuntu-versions produced. 12.04 that I've been running for close to two years has also been rock stable for me, and for most people I know running that LTS. Of course it's people that are unhappy that make the most noice. But Unity, in the form it has been since 12.04, has for a whole bunch of people just wanting to get work done, been a great "out of sight out of mind" desktop environment. I for one would not trade Unity for Gnome 2's "legendary" glory days.

Next you're talking about the button switch like Shuttleworth was purposely trying to piss you off personally. No offence, but I'm willing to bet they didn't just do that for fun, and put some research into that decision. If I were to guess, I'd say that most of the people changing the placement back the first time didn't bother next time they upgraded and are perfectly happy with the decision today (myself included).

You should also do your research regarding Kubuntu. He did not fire Riddell, the lead developer, he reassigned a full time employee and thus hanged Canonicals sponsoring to "only" providing the necessary infrastructure. Treating Kubuntu as the other Ubuntu-derived flavors like Lubuntu, Xubuntu and Edubuntu.

So in conclusion; I don't care what you use as your OS (I really don't), but don't speak about personal experience as if it were universal truths. And don't think that for every discontent distro-hopping Mint user, there's not three perfectly happy Ubuntu users getting work done quietly

I've noticed this throughout my years using and reading about Linux: The biggest gripes and flamewars are the Desktop Environments. The default look and design of gui's, keyboard shortcuts, what's included, what is not. Yet too often, all I see in these discussions are predominantly "face value" arguments and buzzwords - very few in depth discussions about what the ideal desktop environment should look like.

Should you know, I'm quite perfectionist about this topic, and I have yet to find any single DE that I'm really satisfied with myself. I have a great phlosophy, though, of what the "perfect" DE really could be for Linux, If anyone is interested in reading...

Despite my viewpoints, I don't wish any ill will to this company that's willing to go through all the work of getting open source to the masses, as I sure like the flexability it provides to users. I wish Canonical the best of luck trying.

I've noticed this throughout my years using and reading about Linux: The biggest gripes and flamewars are the Desktop Environments. The default look and design of gui's, keyboard shortcuts, what's included, what is not. Yet too often, all I see in these discussions are predominantly "face value" arguments and buzzwords - very few in depth discussions about what the ideal desktop environment should look like.

Should you know, I'm quite perfectionist about this topic, and I have yet to find any single DE that I'm really satisfied with myself. I have a great phlosophy, though, of what the "perfect" DE really could be for Linux, If anyone is interested in reading...

Despite my viewpoints, I don't wish any ill will to this company that's willing to go through all the work of getting open source to the masses, as I sure like the flexability it provides to users. I wish Canonical the best of luck trying.

It's the Linux bike shed. There's a small number of people who know about and care about important things--see Valve's work on porting complex games from Windows to Linux--but everyone has an opinion about the location of the minimize button. Like the best of us, I can produce a spontaneous half-hour diatribe on how {Windows,OS X,XFCE,Unity} is just the most terrible interface ever, but the big WIMP UI problems have already been largely solved and we're left to squabble over trivialities.

That's not to say there aren't improvements that could be made in desktop environments. But the flamewars lack depth because the participants (like myself in the case of DEs) are mostly not qualified to form an authoritative opinion on the deep issues, if they (like myself) are even aware of what those deep issues may be.

That's not to say there aren't improvements that could be made in desktop environments. But the flamewars lack depth because the participants (like myself in the case of DEs) are mostly not qualified to form an authoritative opinion on the deep issues, if they (like myself) are even aware of what those deep issues may be.

Just how relevant are these "deeper issues" when many users say they can't or don't want to use the UI and go elsewhere (as has happened with Ubuntu and Win8 and Gnome3)?

I've noticed this throughout my years using and reading about Linux: The biggest gripes and flamewars are the Desktop Environments. The default look and design of gui's, keyboard shortcuts, what's included, what is not. Yet too often, all I see in these discussions are predominantly "face value" arguments and buzzwords - very few in depth discussions about what the ideal desktop environment should look like.

Should you know, I'm quite perfectionist about this topic, and I have yet to find any single DE that I'm really satisfied with myself. I have a great phlosophy, though, of what the "perfect" DE really could be for Linux, If anyone is interested in reading...

Despite my viewpoints, I don't wish any ill will to this company that's willing to go through all the work of getting open source to the masses, as I sure like the flexability it provides to users. I wish Canonical the best of luck trying.

I'd be interested in reading about it .

Personally, the biggest reason I don't like Unity is because of how it shows all open windows from all work spaces in the taskbar, no matter what work space you're on. I use a separate work space for each activity I'm doing, ie one has my music and audio book app open, one has my browser, one just for games, etc. And when you group them all together, I suddenly have 12 different apps/windows open on one task bar and it makes trying to figure out what I was doing more time consuming. It also makes multiple work spaces pretty pointless.

The other reason is the whole "just start typing the name of the app, no more need to navigate through multiple menus..." Yeah... I'm sorry but I can't remember the names of all the apps I use. I like being able to have a menu that has all my apps sorted and categorized so I can browse through them. Its especially useful when something is added/changed/removed during an update.

I don't really know what a perfect DE would be honestly. I never understood the point of multiple work spaces until I started using them, now I can't do without them. The same with a lot of the visual effects, wobbly windows, the cube, etc. They don't really add functionality, but they do offer a nice visual representation of how you are interacting with the DE.

I've noticed this throughout my years using and reading about Linux: The biggest gripes and flamewars are the Desktop Environments. The default look and design of gui's, keyboard shortcuts, what's included, what is not. Yet too often, all I see in these discussions are predominantly "face value" arguments and buzzwords - very few in depth discussions about what the ideal desktop environment should look like.

Should you know, I'm quite perfectionist about this topic, and I have yet to find any single DE that I'm really satisfied with myself. I have a great phlosophy, though, of what the "perfect" DE really could be for Linux, If anyone is interested in reading...

Despite my viewpoints, I don't wish any ill will to this company that's willing to go through all the work of getting open source to the masses, as I sure like the flexability it provides to users. I wish Canonical the best of luck trying.

I'd be interested in reading about it .

Personally, the biggest reason I don't like Unity is because of how it shows all open windows from all work spaces in the taskbar, no matter what work space you're on. I use a separate work space for each activity I'm doing, ie one has my music and audio book app open, one has my browser, one just for games, etc. And when you group them all together, I suddenly have 12 different apps/windows open on one task bar and it makes trying to figure out what I was doing more time consuming. It also makes multiple work spaces pretty pointless.

The other reason is the whole "just start typing the name of the app, no more need to navigate through multiple menus..." Yeah... I'm sorry but I can't remember the names of all the apps I use. I like being able to have a menu that has all my apps sorted and categorized so I can browse through them. Its especially useful when something is added/changed/removed during an update.

I don't really know what a perfect DE would be honestly. I never understood the point of multiple work spaces until I started using them, now I can't do without them. The same with a lot of the visual effects, wobbly windows, the cube, etc. They don't really add functionality, but they do offer a nice visual representation of how you are interacting with the DE.

Hee hee hee... I shall explain what my vision about this "perfect" DE is. This might take awile to read, so bare with me.

First off, I _love_ interfaces. All these innovative ways to run apps, different themes, eye candy - all placed upon a square canvas, your screen. Some UI's work for many people, and others... an aquired taste, or not working at all. Experimental UI's? Why not? It's not like windows 95 or OS/X are the best UI's since sliced bread! Unified consistant interfaces - I like those a lot! My "master" DE would allow easy customization for users and distro-developers alike to make their own UI. No UI discrimination allowed.

Secondly, I love features as well! They bound what you can do with your computer, and they control your workflow. Some people like and use lots of features, while others, like me, are minimalists, and consider "not having a feature" a feature in itself. My DE would have lots of features, but users and distro-developers can chose what they want and not want - all the way down to if it's only but a single window manager.

Now this is where the modern concept of the "desktop environment" has major annoyances to me - it assumes that you _need_ a set of default configuration tools, a defualt UI, and a "unique experience", with interdependencies so that experience stays pure. My "DE" refuses this idea, as everyone will have their own views about what "sane defaults," good aesthetics, and usability really mean. Instead, why not just make a bunch of interchangable structures that allow users, designers, and distributors to make what they want instead? It's better than having developers keep reinventing desktops over and over again, and blocking others from tampering their defaults.

So that's my compressed concept of my idealized DE... Critique as much as you wish.

That's not to say there aren't improvements that could be made in desktop environments. But the flamewars lack depth because the participants (like myself in the case of DEs) are mostly not qualified to form an authoritative opinion on the deep issues, if they (like myself) are even aware of what those deep issues may be.

Just how relevant are these "deeper issues" when many users say they can't or don't want to use the UI and go elsewhere (as has happened with Ubuntu and Win8 and Gnome3)?

The deeper issues don't lead to much squabbling. One of the best selling apps for Win 8 is a Start Menu add-in. We (almost) all are bothered by the Start Screen because of the jarring violation of the "don't switch interfaces mid-task" paradigm that has been known since forever.

I've read much more wailing about the placement of the minimize button in Unity than about its grouping of windows across all desktops coupled with poor window switching ability, yet the latter is a much greater problem. Perhaps I just don't visit the parts of the internet where useful interface conversations take place.

Ubuntu is easy to install and use, but like all the major desktop distros it obscures a lot of internals in the interest of ease-of-use. E.g., you plug in a USB stick, and it's mounted read-write automatically for you. That kind of do-what-I-probably-want interface has brought a lot of people to Linux, so I'm glad Shuttleworth is still footing the bill.

Um, that part is inherited from Gnome and nothing Ubuntu intenved. Quite frankly, it's bad design as well. You may not recall it but a while back there was a bug in the image decoder that could be used by manipulated images on an USB flash drive to execute commands. So Gnome/Ubuntu with automount and automatic thumbnail generation was affected, even when the screen was locked.In the KDE world under Plasma Desktop OTOH a plugged in drive just pops up a passive message. Drives stay unmounted until the user clicks on the drive in either the popup or the file manager, so it could not be used by an attacker who has physical access to a locked session.

I've been using Ubuntu on my desktop for about 2-3 years and I have no problems with any of the latest distributions.

It's sad for me to see people complaining on how they just can't fix stuff it doesn't work. I don't think any popular contemporary GNU/Linux distro is so hard for one to get used to. I see a lot of old and non-technical people who don't even know english that do it.

I think it's time to just admit that change is hard. This is the main problem. You get stuck with a mindset and is (mentally) too comfortable to keep going with it, although along the way you get a lot of crap.

Other thing that a lot of people don't realise is that any GNU/Linux distro that gains popularity helps all the others. I don't see the point of all the fanboy-ism and hate. You like Fedora or Suse, go with it but don't trash Ubuntu just because you don't like a specific UI or don't understand what is their long time goal. Grow up and remember you are free to choose and to develop for any platform you want.

I've been using Ubuntu in various forms since about 2006, and I have to agree. I've been back and forth in my opinion on every version. I liked KDE, but then it got really buggy, and I gave it up. I liked Gnome 2, but then Unity came out and I tried Xfce -- but it had some annoying bugs and limitations as well.

I went back to KDE. Back to Unity. Back to Xfce.

Here I am now, using Windows 7 at work, alternating my home computing between Unity's version of Ubuntu 13.10 and Kubuntu's alternative. I go back and forth, because I've grown to love both of them. Both are *nearly* bug free, and the bugs I find are few and minor. Each gives me some things I prefer over the other, but I have to admit that over time Unity is growing on me.

I'm not a professional developer, although I play around with programming here and there. My experience is as a desktop user, and it's a good one.

At this time, it's Windows that I actually find annoying and user-unfriendly. I came to Linux from Mac-land, and although I missed the Apple approach for a while, I don't any more.

So when I read from some "long-time Ubuntu user" that Windows is still the better platform, and more user friendly, I just have to shake my head. We're all biased, but no one else's biases are any more valid than mine, and my biases draw from years of pleasant (and occasionally, but more and more rare, infuriating) experiences.

I couple of years ago, I was able to pry my wife's cold dead Mac from her desperate clutches and move her to Ubuntu. She's on 12.04 LTS, and now she thanks me for helping her change. She truly loves it, and she's far from computer-nerd material. So nobody can tell me that Ubuntu is not a pleasant and productive, reliable, and friendly desktop experience. I know first-hand that it is.

I've actually been extremely happy with OpenSuse 13.1. I'm generally not a fan of "ideology before functionality" distros like OpenSuse or Fedora when compared to Ubuntu/Mint

Ubuntu ships as much non-free software by default as both Fedora and openSUSE. In all cases – Fedora, openSUSE, and Ubuntu – the user has to enable non-free repositories and in both openSUSE and Ubuntu via simple mouse clicks. Only in Fedora the process is slightly more complicated but this is mitigated by the Korora remix which is essencially to Fedora what Mint is to Ubuntu: A more userfriendly variant with proprietary prepos enabled by default. (See http://www.zdnet.com/korora-20-peach-ha ... 000025043/ for more info.)